American Beauty Movie Analysis

1 Within the first twenty minutes of the film “American Beauty” I knew Freud would have had a hay day with this film. The main characters I will be referring to is Lester, Caroline, Jane, Angele, and Ricky. Luster is married to Caroline. Luster and Caroline’s daughter is Jane. Angele is Jane’s friend. Ricky will later become Jane’s romantic interest. This film is packed full of lustful relationships, blurred lines of morals, and unhealthy relationships. Lester develops lust for Angele. This intensifies after Lester over hears a conversation between Jane and Angele regarding Angele’s views of Lester. Lester begins working out and becomes fit in order to win over Angele. The lack of morals in the film is astonishing. For example, Caroline has an affair and Lester black mails his employer. Unhealthy relationships between Caroline, Lester, and Jane remains a constant theme throughout the film. For example, Lester and Caroline regularly argues in front of Jane, Caroline seems to be verbally abusive towards Lester and Jane. I have watched this film four times now since being assigned this paper and I firmly believe it is likely the craziest film in the history of ever. I will discuss the five main characters’ in terms of psychosocial theory development, moral development, and psychoanalytic theory. …show more content…
There are eight major stages in this theory and the age range is from birth to sixty-five years of age and older. I picked this theory because everyone can be categorized in a stage of this theory. I believe Lester exhibits severe depression. In the beginning of the film he hates his job, dislikes his wife, believes his wife and daughter thinks he is a “loser”. I believe he thinks his life is meaningless. For these reasons I would place him in the Generativity vs. Stagnation stage. Although it seems that for Lester a sense of accomplishment is out of reach for him. Because of